Standing Outside the Fire
by Nightcrawlerlover
Summary: Set during Passion, and then AU. A very familiar someone confronts Angelus after he kills Jenny. R&R, please.


**Here's a new Buffy/Yu-Gi-Oh crossover oneshot I cooked while watching parts of the Season 2 episode Passion, and then listening to the song Standing Outside the Fire by Garth Brooks. I hope you like it. :) **

**This is set so that a certain someone confronts Angelus after he kills Jenny, and then it goes AU from there. **

**Disclaimer: Genius Kazuki Takahashi owns Yu-Gi-Oh. Joss Whedon (also a genius) owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I own the songfics, stories, novellas, poems and writings I cook up from time to time. **

Standing Outside the Fire

_We call them cool_  
><em>Those hearts that have no scars to show<em>  
><em>The ones that never do let go<em>  
><em>And risk the tables being turned<em>

_We call them fools_  
><em>Who have to dance within the flame<em>  
><em>Who chance the sorrow and the shame<em>  
><em>That always comes with getting burned<em>

_But you've got to be tough_

_when consumed by desire_  
><em>‛Cause it's not enough <em>

_just to stand outside the fire_

_We call them strong_  
><em>Those who can face this world alone<em>  
><em>Who seem to get by on their own<em>  
><em>Those who will never take the fall<em>

_We call them weak_  
><em>Who are unable to resist<em>  
><em>The slightest chance love might exist<em>  
><em>And for that forsake it all<em>

_They're so hell-bent on giving,_

_walking a wire_  
><em>Convinced it's not living <em>

_if you stand outside the fire_

_Standing outside the fire_  
><em>Standing outside the fire<em>  
><em>Life is not tried, it is merely survived<em>  
><em>If you're standing outside the fire<em>

_There's this love that is burning_  
><em>Deep in my soul<em>  
><em>Constantly yearning to get out of control<em>  
><em>Wanting to fly higher and higher<em>  
><em>I can't abide<em>  
><em>Standing outside the fire<em>

_Standing outside the fire_  
><em>Standing outside the fire<em>  
><em>Life is not tried, it is merely survived<em>  
><em>If you're standing outside the fire<em>

_Standing outside the fire_  
><em>Standing outside the fire<em>  
><em>Life is not tried, it is merely survived<em>  
><em>If you're standing outside the fire<em>

-Garth Brooks, **Standing Outside the Fire**

* * *

><p>There was a landing by a large arched window. Jenny ran up onto it and right into a waiting Angelus. She screamed when he grabbed hold of her. He chuckled and looked into her face, as though he was looking into her soul, or aura.<p>

At that moment, a thought crossed her mind that he could've made a darn good gypsy himself with the mind-reading if he hadn't been an evil vampire.

He put one hand around behind her head and touched her lips with the fingers of his other hand. The view out of the window was of the park beyond with the palm trees lit up. A car drove by.

Angelus then said, "Sorry, Jenny. This is where you get off."

He then took his fingers from her lips and put his hand under her chin. In one swift movement, he twisted her head and snapped her neck. Her body collapsed to the floor. He looked up and around, breathing heavily from the running, the excitement... and the fear that he had smelled during his chasing after Jenny.

"Ah... I never get tired of doing that."

However, it was just as he was about to step into the shadows and leave the school that a voice answered. A very familiar baritone voice at that. One he knew all too well...

"Enter omnes qui quaerunt scientiam." (Enter all ye who seek knowledge.)

Angelus stopped in his tracks. _That voice... _

"Well, well, well, Angelus. It's always the being the knowledge seeker with you, isn't it?"

Angelus then turned around very slowly, and his yellow vampire eyes widened as they fell on the owner of the baritone voice that had frozen him for a bit as he stepped out of the shadows he had been hiding in.

The man – if a man was what he really was – wore a black T-shirt with a blue coat over it. Pinned over the coat was a flowing purple cape. Black jeans seemed to go on and on over his long legs, and on his feet were black boots. His eyes were like hypnotic crimson jewels. Angelus had heard it said that those eyes could look into anyone's aura, and he had some kind of... charisma about him. _Well, they sure had a point there, no doubt about that. _

His hair featured multiple layers, including long blond crocked, pointy locks for his fringe. Some of the blond locks were jutting upwards. The rest of his hair featured five large spikes colored black with magenta rims all along the edges.

"Atem."

The name slipped out of Angelus's mouth before he had a chance to think it over, or call it back. However, the man simply just smiled.

"Yes, that is my name," he said, and then stepped over to Angelus so that he was facing him. "So, Angelus, it seems you're still the same the last time you saw me – about two hundred and forty years ago."

All Angelus could do was nod in reply. He had seen Atem before. It seemed like many years ago, back when he had been a part of the Whirlwind.

Back then, Atem, Angelus knew, was quite the mysterious and enigmatic being. Only he, Darla, Spike and Drusilla could sense him, and would often see him slip away into the shadows. However, they never got a good look at his face. They would always see him as a being that wrapped himself in darkness, and had what Angelus had heard some men call "Shadow powers". However, exactly what those mysterious, inscrutable "Shadow powers" were, Angelus had yet to figure out.

Plus, it seemed that Atem had an unearthly aura about him. Maybe it was an Egyptian kind of aura, probably.

Suddenly, images Angelus thought he'd long since buried came rushing back to the surface, just as bubbles would come to the surface in a bubble bath...

_Atem following a certain girl with hair the color of the sun and eyes like emeralds to his bed and then pushing her so that she landed on her back while it made soft contact with the bed... _

_Atem is now lying atop the girl from before, stroking her cheek while looking lovingly into her eyes... _

"_My dearest Buffy,_"_ he purrs. _"_You complete me. It is because of you that I am a better man – a better Pharaoh, of course._"

_The girl – Buffy – simply arches her back and whimpers in pleasure as Egyptian spices float through the air and cloud her senses, making it impossible for her to think or form a coherent sentence. He then runs his fingers across her white skin, as though she is something he has never seen previously._

"Atem!" Angelus then hissed angrily, as Atem smirked in pleasure (as he also remembered those days from back then). "How dare you drudge up all those memories? That girl, Buffy? How could you just calmy and casually show that vision of her lying there beneath you, and her unabashedly showing her love to another – namely you, an Egyptian King – when she has now sworn she would love and care for me all the days of her life?

"Why? How?"

Atem simply smirked before saying, "Because apparently, she was a slave girl in my harem in a past life, which happened to be five thousand years ago, if I'm not mistaken. She was beautiful just as she is now – the yellow locks, the green eyes, and the fiery spirit. The same things she has now."

He looked at Angelus, who was now clutching the sides of his head, as though willing the images inside his brain to go away, and then smirked to himself, as he sometimes did whenever he knew something that other people didn't.

"Oh, Angelus," he replied. "Sometimes you just need to let go – to learn lessons the hard way."

He stopped for a moment, taking in the now shocked look on the vampire's face.

Then, as Angelus moved backwards and stood against the wall a few feet away from the spot where Jenny's body lay, Atem simply turned on his heel and, his amethyst cape flowing behind him, slowly vanished into the shadows.

Angelus had to admit, if there was one thing about Pharaoh Atem, it was that he was so mysterious, so enigmatic, and so... inscrutable.

What was it about Atem that made so many people wonder about and be intrigued by him... ? Was it his charisma? His aura of a commanding presence? His kingly wisdom?

Whatever it was, Angelus just wasn't sure.

**Well, I hope you like this oneshot as much as I liked writing it. After all, Atem does have Shadow Magic in this one, and it did protect him from Angelus's murderous wrath. (Personally I find that to be kind of a challenge, and a cool one at that.) **


End file.
